If you have multiple installations of PHP, and "php --ini" keeps loading the same configuration file for every version instead of the configuration file on the installation path, it might be worthy to check the windows registry.

I found a key on "HEKY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTEARE\Wow6432Node\PHP\IniFilePath" that override any installation, which cause "php --ini" to crash stating a version mismatch with the extensions being loaded.

I guess the key was created with a windows installer for IIS on FastCGI, but just guessing.

For the record, some of the errors thrown are:"The procedure entry point php_sys_stat could not be located in the dynamic link library php5.dll. ""The procedure entry point php_checkuid could not be located in the dynamic link library php5.dll. "